


Code Switch

by Sharksdontsleep



Category: The Wire
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-01 23:41:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2791958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharksdontsleep/pseuds/Sharksdontsleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stringer goes legit in the summer of ‘00. Looking back, Avon calls it a ‘vacation,’ like String was up in New York running dope in Little Baltimore or sent to Jessup on a gun charge. He doesn’t remember why - something about a deal gone bad or one too many bodies to hide in Leakin or just the game being the game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Code Switch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Myrtle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myrtle/gifts).



> Thanks to MC for the beta.

Stringer goes legit in the summer of ‘00. Looking back, Avon calls it a ‘vacation,’ like String was up in New York running dope in Little Baltimore or sent to Jessup on a gun charge. He doesn’t remember why - something about a deal gone bad or one too many bodies to hide in Leakin or just the game being the game. 

For a summer, he does his taxes, makes copies on overheated machines, gives discounts to the church biddies who come to copy their newsletters and fuss at him to take their daughters out, eats chicken and rice he pays a hopper to bring him from the carry-out, and ignores Avon’s pages.

He can’t go completely legit, of course. No such thing, at least not in Baltimore. His name’s still fresh enough on block that he doesn’t have to pay the corner boys not to tear his place up. The first one who tries ends up on the wrong end of an aluminum baseball bat, courtesy one of Avon’s new soldiers. Or that’s what Russell hears from Curtis at the bar, anyway.

He runs numbers, of course, and buys some of his supplies from a greasy-looking dock-rat who says they fell out of a shipping crate. He keeps a set of books for the government and another for a bank account in his sister’s name, but that’s the limit of it. The gun under the counter is for his protection, licensed and registered and clean as uncut cocaine.

He reaches for it when Omar comes in with a job.

“You can unhand that piece you fingering behind the counter,” Omar says. He holds up a wad of cash. “If I was gonna take something, it already been took.” He smiles that shark smile of his and rests his forearms on the counter. “Had to see it for myself,” he says, gesturing to Russell, the printers going in the backroom, the sad window A/C unit not doing much to combat the humidity.

“What can I do for you?” Russell says, with as much ‘fuck you’ as he can put into it.

“Need to know how much fifty copies of this’ll run me,” he says. He produces a flyer for a church rummage sale, unfolding it.

“Ten cents per,” Russell says. “Twenty, if you want it on colored paper.”

“You really make money on that?” Omar says, shaking his head. “Nickle and dime stuff.” He puts a wadded up 20 on the counter. “I’ll be down on the corner for a few. Got to take care of some business,” he says.

Russell runs the copies. There’s yelling outside, Omar probably making in the course of a minute a hundred times what he just paid Russell, then shots, the wail of sirens. Russell turns up the radio.

 

He hires a neighborhood boy, Marcus, a kid too dumb to steal from the register, but too trifling to actually get anything right. 

“It’s an extra 15 cent per if they want it double-sided or on the heavy stock,” Russell says. “How fucking stupid do you gotta be that you can’t multiply right?” He’s tempted just to whup the kid’s ass and put him out, to go get one of the little hoppers who can at least remember a fucking count. 

But Marcus’ mother Neecy comes around with plates of home cooking, and sends Marcus down the block to play pinball and guzzle soda while she lets Russell fuck her in the back of the store. Russell may be in his first semester of business classes, but he understands that there’s usually an opportunity cost for pussy, and putting up with an idiot son is a small price from his perspective. 

Marcus proves himself not entirely useless when he starts borrowing comic books from the local library, then running them off at the store and selling them to some of the runners and touts for five dollars apiece, giving four to Russell and accumulating enough money to buy new shoes that some of the kids jump him for. 

He drags into the store in his socked feet, sporting a black eye and a busted-up lip, expecting something like sympathy from Russell. 

“What’d you think was gonna happen?” Russell says. “Can’t own what you don’t defend, and you ain’t defending nothing with them soft little puppy hands.” 

He must go crying to his mama, since he doesn’t come back the next day, and Neecy stops coming around. 

The next kid, Amir, skims from the register, but he puts in the re-up order for toner right and doesn’t try to sling on the side. All in all, it’s probably the best Russell can hope for.

 

It’s a quiet summer, as far as summers in Baltimore go. Bodies drop, of course, some victims of the game, some just victims of long days, short tempers, and the unrelenting heat. 

The police come around, a detective that used to be a narco asking questions, clearly not buying Russell’s ‘I don’t know nothing about that’ routine, even if this time, it’s mostly true. He doesn’t _know_ , though he can probably guess the body dropped in an alley is on Avon - Wee-bey, probably, too clean to be Bird’s work - the one over on the East Side is one of Prop Joe’s boys. 

He makes his copies, goes out, throws a few bills at a strip joint Avon doesn’t run, declines offers of anything but beer and weed. He doesn’t go to church, instead spending his Sunday sleeping off Saturday and trying to get through the reading on inelastic demand until his brain feels elastic. 

He walks past the corner boys, the junkies chasing whatever blast they can scrounge up money to pay for, the kids running the streets on rusting bikes, the girls who’re too young to grin at him but do anyway, the older ones who smile at him, maybe for who he is or who he used to be. 

A few come around the store, leaning over the counter, asking about this or that, running their nails over the pricing guides and scowling when he charges them the full amount. 

One, Shaina, does hair out of her house and gets a thousand color flyers printed, double-sided, on neon paper. 

He takes her out, a movie down by the waterfront. She’s a little younger than him, did a couple years at Coppin State before coming back to the neighborhood to take care of her aunt. 

“She passed about a year ago,” Shaina says, over dinner. “Trying to save some before I go back to school.” She has a kid, a two-year-old named Davon who’s running through all her money, so she works at the laundromat and does hair on the side. “You know how it is. You gotta have your job and your _other_ job.” She gives him a knowing smile. 

“About that,” he says, and tells her about his one and only job. 

She gives him one of those long stares neighborhood girls are so good at. “Thought you was in it,” she says.

“Trying to live right,” he says. “For now, anyway.”

“Ain’t we all?” she says, laughing. 

 

Avon calls. Calls and pages him about stupid shit, leaves a message to tell him about some new barbecue place that opened, about how his nephew is a fool, about a boxing match he’d watched and didn’t Stringer think this new MMA thing was some weak-ass pussy bullshit. He doesn’t talk business and he doesn’t seem discouraged when Russell doesn’t pick up.

He leaves a long rambling message, high, something about a rec league basketball team, a caper from their youth. “You had them skinny-ass legs, man, like two string beans, and that squeaky voice, running with the older boys like you was one.” 

It’d been the only summer Russell played; he’d made the team, but Avon hadn’t, too short, though he’d sprung up like a weed the next year. He’d wanted to play, though, dogging after Russell, feet too-big in his off-brand sneakers, until Russell had talked him up to Coach, who’d let Avon warm the bench with the team.

Avon’s been rambling at the machine for a minute now. “Never did find how Coach knew about us,” he says. “Still got those shoes I took off Little Man, even though they busted as hell now.” 

They both got put off the team when it turned out Avon’d been running numbers on them for one of the local games. They never knew how Coach found out but it didn’t matter, since they had to haul ass out of there, Avon helping himself to one of the other players’ shoes on the way.

Afterward, Avon handed him a stack of bills and said, “Take your cut, man,” like it’d been Russell’s all along. He still has one bill, a crumpled five he shoved into his wallet that he'd never spent.

Now, listening to Avon talk into his voicemail, he takes out his wallet, finds the bill, soft with age. Money’s made for spending not holding, Russell knows, but he puts it back all the same.

 

Russell comes in one morning to find the windows broken and four messages on the store answering machine from the alarm company. The safe’s busted open, but he wasn’t so foolish as to leave money locked overnight with only a five-digit combination and some hinges protecting it. One of the machines has been smashed, though, the big copier that duplexed all right and didn’t fuss at him over loading the paper up the wrong way. 

The insurance is still under Brianna’s name, or one of her aunt’s names anyway. He meant to change it after cutting ties but never got around to doing it. He dials Bri’s number, lets it ring once before hanging up. 

A cop comes to crunch across the broken glass and take notes for five minutes before being called away to some other Baltimore crime scene. There’s probably some file folder in the precinct with his name on it now, one Russell might come to regret one day, but there’s never a follow up, so who knows if it made it beyond the cop’s notepad. He doesn’t call the station again.

Omar comes by, looks at the scene, smoking and shrugging off Russell’s questions about if he knows who did it. “You a taxpayer now,” he says. “Go put them legitimate dollars to work.” 

He buys better security bars and another gun, unregistered. He puts the word out to some of the hoppers than the next set of fools trifling enough to break his windows will get two in the head. 

He doesn’t tell Shaina about any of it, but she knows anyway. “Good to have protection,” he says, when she asks. She smiles a little brighter, runs her hand down his arm, then his leg, and they don’t do much talking after that. 

“So you back in?” Avon says, to Russell’s answering machine. No surprise Avon knows, what with soldiers gossiping worse than old church biddies. 

Or maybe it was one of Avon’s boys who’d done it, trying to bring him back to the fold or whatever. Stringer loves Avon like a brother, the blood of the game thick as any between family. But love and trust are different, especially in Baltimore. 

He gets his answer when a man from the West Baltimore Better Business Bureau comes knocking, a slick downtown motherfucker in too nice a suit for the kind of business he says he runs, some kind of house-cleaning operation. 

“One of them, anyway,” he says, smile too white and too wide. “You got your business and your _business_ , you know?” He doesn’t wait for Russell to respond. “Seems like you’ve had some misfortune here, son. It really is a shame to see such a promising young businessman like yourself struggling. Especially one with such roots in the community.” He glances around like he’s casing the place. Maybe he is. 

“Seems like everyone after money that ain’t theirs,” Russell says. “How’d you come to hear about this?”

“No secrets on this side of town,” he says. “My organization aims to stop these kinds of attacks. For a reasonable membership fee, of course.” He pauses, checks his watch, as if he’s suddenly bored by the conversation. “Who knows when the next set of hooligans will be around?”

Russell’s been in the game long enough to recognize a shakedown when he hears it. “And if I don’t pay up?” Russell asks. 

“Sooner or later, everyone pays.” He turns to leave. “I’ll be in touch, Mr. Bell,” he says. “One way or another.”

 

A body turns up in one of the row houses a day or two later.

“We found this on him,” the detective says, holding a plastic bag with a torn-up flier. It’s one of Shaina’s, printed on neon green 24lb stock. 

“Whole block’s papered in them,” Russell says. 

“This mope was bald,” he says. He’s a big man, cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth, thinning white hair and beady eyes. “What’s a bald man need with the flyer to a lady’s hair salon?”

“Everyone’s gotta have something to hope for.”

The big man, to his credit, laughs. “And this had nothing to do with your place getting smashed up a few days back?” He says it direct, then waits like he’s got all of the time in the world. 

“I just run a copy business,” Russell says, shrugging. 

“And I’m just a poor dumb white boy from Hampden,” he says. He flips his pad shut. “Look, I’m a murder police. Don’t much care about whatever side business you got going on. I just want this one put down, keep my sergeant off my ass. You know how it is.” He gives a small, fatherly smile. “Anything you feel like telling me to expedite this process, I would be appreciative.” He slides one of his cards across the counter. 

“I hear anything,” Russell says. “I’ll be sure to drop a dime.” 

“You do that, son,” he says. 

After he leaves, Russell doesn’t call Avon, just dials all but the last digit, finger poised over the button. What would he say? Avon’s always been like that, doing for Stringer and Bri, for his idiot cousins and soft nephew. He could go back easy, maybe just a day, eat some pit beef, drink a few, shoot the back-in-the-day shit, then walk away. For a minute, he feels like a fiend promising himself one final blast, a last good time before parting ways. Maybe he should hop the next bus somewhere else, Philadelphia, Boston, another planet. But he knows the game isn’t like that, has its strings on him more than even he knows. 

He puts the phone down. If the 5-0 is up in Avon’s shit, best not to call and let the police see the connect. He calls the insurance company instead, tells them to put a hold on transferring the policy on the store into his name. “Are you certain, Mr. Bell?” the customer service rep asks. 

“Looks that way,” he says.

 

In the end, it’s not a decision, really. Avon stumbles in one August day, bleeding from his side and with a gun that ends up going down a storm drain later. “String,” he gasps, before collapsing. He leaves a blood smear on the black and white tile floor.

“Yeah,” Russell says, then locks the door and goes to call a vet they pay in cash and dope to stitch them up. He pages her, punching in the emergency code by heart, his phone buzzing a minute later.

“500,” she says, as a greeting.

He has that in cash, of course, but it’s what he’s made this week, less expenses. “Fuck this,” he says, after giving her his address and hanging up the phone.

Avon comes to long enough to give the vet a handful of bills, a few thousand from the looks of it. “Keep it, doc,” he says. “Down payment for the next caper.” He’s strung out on whatever she gave him and loopy as shit.

“You got him from here?” she asks, stripping her gloves into Russell’s trashcan.

“Yeah,” Russell says. “Got him from here on out.” 

He shutters the store, then gets Avon in the back of his truck, laying out against the leather seats. “Don’t bleed on my shit,” he says. 

Avon’s half-asleep from the meds, but he’s awake enough to give Russell a smile like a fiend on a blast, the kind that Russell can’t help but return. “Knew you was solid, String,” he mumbles. “Knew we was.”

And that’s it, all he needs to hear, Avon’s way of putting something straight that feels so tangled up. 

Brianna gives him no end of shit when he half-drags, half-carries Avon up to his apartment, like Stringer had been the triggerman himself. “Gun’s down the drain, Bri,” he says, after he maneuvers Avon into bed and returns to the living room. “Doc’s paid off.”

She gets a banded stack of cash from somewhere, and gives Stringer a long contemplative look before putting the money on the coffee table between them. “I’m trying to decide what kind of money this is, Russell,” she says. “Is this ‘shut your mouth to the police,’ money?’ Or ‘welcome back to the business’ money?” 

“Which one you want it to be?” he says, but he reaches for it and pockets it without thumbing through it. If it’s Avon’s, the count will be right, anyway. 

She looks at him, that same stare Avon has. “He missed you this summer,” she says. “Said he needed someone to keep an eye on the low-rises, supervise distribution lines. They got new product and too much cash for the hot pack of fools he’s running.” 

“Don’t think it was an accident, him coming to me today,” he says, evenly.

“You think that was just business?” she says. “You’re his family, sure as I am. Might not be blood between you, but since when did that matter?”

“Suppose not,” Stringer says. The cash sits heavy in his pocket, and he can hear Avon shifting around in the other room, mattress squeaking. “Doc say he need another pill in an hour or so.”

“You gonna stick around?” Brianna asks. “There’s fish fry if you’re hungry. Maybe get cleaned up.” She gestures to the drying blood stain on his shirt. “He probably got something that could fit you.” 

“Yeah,” Stringer says. “Guess I am.”


End file.
